Week 1 (1/20,22)

If you don't have a CS UNIX account (e.g. because you're a non-CS major),
sign up for a temporary account IMMEDIATELY! It will take several days for
the account to be activated. Also, please be aware that the
account will expire and completely disappear two weeks into the
spring semester.

As indicated on the course overview page, your response should be well-thought-out, coherent, and concise. Quality of written expression will be a factor in the grading (use full sentences). Short, to-the-point answers are preferred. For full credit, your email should be sent by 12:01am on Tuesday, 1/27.

The programming assignment is to use
communication among agents to help an agent improve its performance at
some task such as keeping track of where the ball is.

To turn in your files, use the turnin
program with grader "mazda" and assignment label "prog3". When the
assignment is there, send us an
email to that effect,
with a brief description of your task, your communication
protocol, and an answer to the following question: Could an
opponent agent disrupt your communication method? How?

Respond to the readings in some way (free-form response). If
you're stuck, you can answer the question from last year:
Think of an application that could be implemented as a multiagent
system or a single agent. Briefly describe the 2 approaches you
envision and list/discuss some of their relative merits.

Week 5 (2/17,19): Agent communication and Teamwork

On Team Formation.
(If the link doesn't work for you, it's also available from
citeseer - top right corner)
Cohen, P. R., Levesque, H. R., and Smith, I.
in Hintikka, J. and Tuomela, R. (Eds.) Contemporary Action
Theory. Synthese, 1997.

Supplemental (optional) readings are on the class resources page. At least look at the abstracts to see if you're interested in reading them.

Exercises: (due at 12:01am on Tuesday, 2/17)

Respond to the readings in some way (free-form response). One
acceptable response is to answer one of the questions from last year:

Programming assignment 3 was to use
communication to help robotic soccer agents improve at some task.
Will KQML, KIF, or FIPA ACL be useful to you as you work on the
assignment? Why or why not?

Choose a domain or example not discussed in the readings
and briefly describe how it could be represented in terms of joint
intentions.

Free-form response.
**OR**
For each of the two articles you chose to read, list the strengths of the described approach with respect to that in the other article. That is, what aspects of the complete task does it focus on that are ignored by the other approach, what unique techniques are used, or what does it do particularly well.

Free-form response.
**OR**
Think of an application not discussed in the readings that you
think could be better implemented with lots of simple agents rather
than a small number of more cognitive agents. Describe and compare
the merits of the two possible approaches.

Free-form response.
**OR**
Identify an idea from one of the 2 applications in the readings
that could be applied to one of the 2 other applications as well, and
explain how it might improve (or at least change) the system.

Week 9 (3/23,25): Game Theory

McCain motivates game theory from an economic perspective involving people as the actors as opposed to the textbook which motivates it from the AI agent perspective. But the theory is the same.

Exercises: (due at 12:01am on Tuesday, 3/23)

Free-form response
**OR**
Identify an application or situation not discussed in the reading
that could be modeled as a matrix game. Specify the game matrix and
identify all the dominant strategies and (pure strategy) Nash
equilibria, if any.

Free-form response
**OR**
Think of a domain not in the readings in which you could benefit
from agent modeling. Briefly outline approaches with and without
modeling and explain what benefits you would expect in the modeling case.

Free-form response
**OR**
Suggest a use for agents in the FCC spectrum auction design
described in the first reading.
**OR**
Suggest a change in TAC that
would make the game more interesting or realistic in some way. In
either case, briefly motivate the need for your suggestion and
describe how your change addresses this need.

Read all the ABSTRACTS and then choose ANY ONE (1) of the following papers. If you have time and are interested, by all means read more. Otherwise, file them away and read the ones you're interested in when you have a chance. These are all super-fun papers!